


Five years, some bad luck, and a football

by jongdae



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Baseball, Alternate Universe - High School, Awkwardness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 17:15:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4444982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jongdae/pseuds/jongdae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes Kris five years, some bad luck, and a football to tell Luhan that He's the Ball to his Baseball Glove.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five years, some bad luck, and a football

**Author's Note:**

> Quick fic for a friend's birthday. Unbeta'd. Ahhahaa.
> 
> There's a point where I even made Kris's chest sound like it's one meter wide. I did not correct it just because I had a few laughs at it.

It’s a really hot summer afternoon.

 

The morning news’ weather forecast flashes in Kris’s mind albeit its irrelevance to his current difficult predicament. He breaks into cold sweat and just walks about at the entrance, helplessly thinking up a solution with the little brain cells he may still have.

He had woken up that morning from an eerie dream about cicadas and a certain boy, bumped his head into the low slanted attic ceiling while getting up, slipped on a used sock while getting off the bed, landed on his face, etcetera etcetera, so on. 

He _had_ known back then that he was up for a bad day. The signs could not have been any clearer.

But what Kris had really thought by a ‘bad day’ was the typical stuff that happens on any layman’s ‘bad day’: missing his bus, running into heavy rain, forgetting his umbrella, having a wedgie, stepping into dog crap, getting targeted by pigeons. Or worse yet, walking by a black cat passing _by_ a ladder that he later walks into because he got distracted trying to remember how the superstition actually goes. 

He should have known that dreaming about his _middle-school-crush-slash-childhood-friend-slash-most-popular-guy-of-the-area_ playing catch with him in a messed up dreamland where rainbow cicadas exist meant so much more than your typical ‘bad day’ omen. 

Indeed, it should have come with a two-story LED light board that reads, “APOCALYPSE NOW” because then maybe Kris Wu would have had a fair enough warning.

 

**Approximately three hours ago**

_Luhan_.

“Haven’t talked to him in like fucking years, I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Kris speaks softly to himself. Then he raises his head. He can’t believe he also just talked to himself. 

Granted, Kris’s life is filled with many things he can’t believe.

He paces up and down the sidewalk in front of The House he hasn’t been to in like a millennia, and he feels like maybe the Lu family are all staring out their windows, peeking through their nice retro curtains, wondering what the fuck Wu Fucking Yi Fan is doing in their front yard, walking around in circles like the Brachiosaurus he never was.

And he was right to think that’s what they were doing because after around thirty minutes of being an indecisive coward, The Relevant Boy steps out the front door, walks straight across the lawn before stopping in front of Kris.

“You’ve been scaring the shit out of my granny—”

Ah. The crystal clear accent-free voice Kris hasn’t heard since five-ever ago. 

“— why are you here, what do you want, and do you realize you’re being a real creep?” the shorter lad finishes, his eyes filled more with concern than scepticism, but that still scares Kris out of his wits.

“I’m here on friendly terms,” the taller protests, though his hands are up in surrender, “Can't we start with a ‘Hi it’s been a long time, how have you been’?”

Luhan snorts. “Which _you_ didn’t do for the past half hour, like the cool sport you are. But, sure, hi it’s been a long time, how have you been?”

Sarcasm is overflowing from his tone, but the taller decides to ignore it. He swallows dryly. “I’ve been better.”

“Sure,” Luhan replies curtly. “I totally care.”

The taller groans, and he wants to give up already, but that wouldn’t be fair to his teammates. As the captain of the baseball team, he needs to set his emotions aside and man it up like a pro.

“Um,” Kris starts, “I… our team… the baseball team at school…”

Luhan raises an eyebrow.

“Our ace pitcher transferred schools,” Kris bites his upper lip, trying to bite down the nervousness, “We need a new pitcher.”

Luhan is somewhere between incredulity and laughing out loud. After two seconds, it’s clear he’s doing the latter.

“You’re here to recruit me!” Luhan exclaims as he throws his head back to laugh wholeheartedly. “ _Me_!”

Kris turns away, hands on his hips and looks down the street, trying to keep his cool.

“I don’t understand what is so funny. We’re desperate, we need a pitcher, it’s our last year.”

“Aye, duizhang, I feel you, but I also don’t. Why me?”

“You … have a breaking ball and have a quirky wind up we could use,” Kris answers carefully as childhood memories of them playing together start flooding his mind, and it’s really not the time but he can’t help them.

“Kris, it’s been like, what, five years I haven’t played baseball,” Luhan deadpans. “And five years we haven’t talked.”

There’s a sharp pain that breaks into Kris’s nostalgic reminiscence that rips through it like nails scratching down blackboards. He opens his mouth and then closes it like a nonplussed goldfish.

Luhan leans forward a bit and then whispers, a tad dangerously, eyes glaring ninja daggers, “Why. Me.”

Trust his childhood friend to know Kris inside out and can tell when his answer hadn’t exactly been quite earnestly complete.

It’s The One question Kris kept praying wouldn’t come up, in all honesty. But a bad day comes hand-in-hand with bad luck, and he should have known not to jinx himself.

 _Because my dreams are convinced it’s got to be you?_ Kris’s thoughts can’t help but butt in like the jerks they are. The last words even come out to the tune of some cheesy boyband mainstream song. Something Direction. Hmm.

_Because I like you since forever and you’re all that I think about because you’re my fated pitcher, you’re the ball to my glove?_

“We’re… good friends,” he tries, then quickly adds for good measure, “you’re a manly jock, and I trust you?”

“Kris, we haven’t talked in half a decade,” Luhan reasserts. “I just said that.”

Kris knows his arguments were as weak as chicken legs, but it’s not like he can confess he’s dreamed about Luhan the night before, or that he’s had provident callings and prophetic visions and pathetic crushes because … because that’s not how things work.

“We…could,” Kris motions with his big hands something vague enough to distract Luhan while he thinks of something smart. The shorter just looks at him expectantly.

After two minutes of his brain just short-circuiting, he holds his hands up in defeat.

“Okay, I give up, I can’t come up with something smart enough to convince you,” Kris groans, “Just take it or leave it, I don’t know anymore. At least I tried.”

To the taller’s surprise, Luhan just grins before looking back down at the ground. 

“Right,” the shorter boy says, then he looks back up, “Okay. Alright. I’ll take it.”

Kris freezes. “Wait, really?” 

Luhan punches Kris’s shoulder, and the latter just widen his eyes, completely confused.

“I think this is where you ask me to come with you to the field and do a trial,” Luhan suggests. "Before I change my mind."

The taller just blinks.

 

 

**Approximately an hour ago**

“So, am I still your messiah ace pitcher with a nameless breaking ball and nice wind up,” Luhan shouts from the mound. Kris rubs his forearm where Luhan’s dead ball had just dug into, seam lines burnt on his skin. He wipes the sweat off his forehead and returns the ball without further comment.

Twenty-eight, Kris counts mentally.

Luhan throws the next ball and it hits Kris’s jewels rather brutally. The catcher falls to his knees, glad he’s made precautions enough to ease a good portion of the pain that would have ensued otherwise, but also wondering if this was all, the Luhan being his fated pitcher fantasy, a good idea in the first place.

Twenty-nine, Kris counts nonetheless.

“You’ve got a ball cup, huh,” Luhan reckons from afar, a snicker upon his lips, “I was just testing.”

Kris throws the ball overhead. He wonders how Luhan could possibly have the face of an angel but the soul of a devil. That _could_ stand as a strong asset against opposing batters, however. The more different a pitcher’s temperament is from their demeanour, the better. 

Or at least he knows the other’s accuracy can’t be half bad if he can manage to pitch down there in one try. And power. That pitch could castrate men without a problem.

“One more time,” he shouts belligerently, and that sort of shuts Luhan up for a while and forces the latter into a more serious mode.

The wind blows between them nicely, and this time Kris has a good feeling of what’s to come next.

Luhan winds up with poise, grips tight, shifts weight, and throws with natural ease.

The ball whistles lightly through the stiff summer air before curving up and then sloping down to Kris’s glove with a clean and loud smack. 

This is exactly what Kris was looking for. 

Thirty, he counts with triumph.

“Nice pitch,” Kris returns with a beaming grin. “That was your _slider_.”

Luhan doesn’t respond and even looks away. Kris stands up, taking off his catcher gear. That prompts the other boy to turn back, eyes a bit glistened, lips just slightly parted, back against the setting sun. 

Kris can’t help but sigh dreamily.

“We’re done?” Luhan asks.

“Thirty pitches just for now,” the catcher replies, “You don’t stretch your arms often enough for us to do more.”

Luhan starts instinctively flexing his arms. “Right.”

He trudges on the mound a few times, contemplative. He takes off the glove – an old battered thing he’s taken from his attic – and examines its knots and scratches while Kris picks up a few stray balls.

 

Then, unceremoniously – though to be fair Kris has had several warnings beforehand about this day being a ‘bad day’ – a squall gathers about them and pours in heavily. Luhan quickly gathers their things and motions Kris to run for the equipment shack. And so they do.

The mud softens at each of their steps and it’s a gruesome and icky feeling, but the rush of adrenaline cooled off warmly by the rain makes up for it, and they can’t help but laugh it out together.

Just like they used to.

 

**Approximately thirty minutes ago**

“Ack, we should have run for the locker room, actually,” Luhan says as he looks out from the tiny window, chin resting on the sill as it’s a tad taller than the boy. “It’s further off but at least the rest of our stuff is there. I need a towel. I need my phone.”

Rainwater is dripping from his chestnut hair and it’s a sight Kris never dreamed he could ever have in front of him. 

“Yeah,” Kris responds idly, looking away because dripping hair also means soaked white shirt if he looks a bit more south. “Well, we could either wait it out a bit or just run to the other side of the field for the lockers since we’re soaked anyways.”

“Yeah,” Luhan mumbles back, still focused at the horizon outside the window. 

“I completely forgot about chances of a thunderstorm today. It looks nasty out there.”

The sentence is left hanging, and for twenty-five whole minutes they just stay quiet: Kris tries to shake excess water off his hair, fighting against the cold that’s seeping into his bones while Luhan just looks out the window counting the raindrops in vain.

The storm doesn’t seem to want to die down. At all.

“Damn it,” Luhan frowns, “I think we’re seriously going to have to run for it.”

Kris shivers and leans against a basket of basketballs. “Right.”

 

Luhan glances back at the taller and holds his hand out. “Ready?”

 

**Approximately two minutes ago**

“The door won’t budge.”

“What do you mean, the door won’t budge?”

“It means what it means, Kris, there’s no fucking double meaning to this.”

“Well, okay… I have the master key anyways, shouldn’t be a problem.”

Luhan looks down at the doorknob.

“There’s no keyhole from the inside, genius.”

 

Lightning flashes, thunder crashes, and reality pours onto them like the bastard it always is.

“We’re trapped in a pathetic equipment room,” Luhan whispers before his mind just goes blank. 

They both facepalm themselves mentally.

 _I’m trapped in a pathetic equipment room with the love of my life,_ Kris tells himself wearily and his life just got both tragic and comedic at the same time.

 

 _A tragicomedy_ , Kris concludes after just gaping at the door for ten whole minutes.

 

 

Maybe this is life’s cue to him. Maybe this is life giving him a well-deserved opportunity. Maybe this is life trapping him in a pickle jar and mocking him because maybe even then he wouldn’t make a move, he wouldn’t confess, he wouldn’t have the guts to even ask Luhan out on a friendly date to shop for baseball gloves and ball cups. 

Luhan shakes the door and kicks it for good measure, twists the knob several last times and bangs his fists on the solid metal, but the thing won’t budge at all.

Kris sneezes hard, and it makes Luhan jolt and turn around.

“You’re going to catch a cold,” the shorter states the obvious, and Kris rolls his eyes because it’s really the least of his many, _many_ concerns.

“I’m fin—” Kris braces for another sneeze, but it doesn’t come so Luhan steps forward and pats Kris’s back.

“If we could just find some kind of … towel,” Luhan looks around, but it’s an equipment room and god how they both regret not running to the lockers’ shack instead. He turns to pout at Kris apologetically.

Little does he know what it really does to Kris’s heart. The taller turns away angrily and tries taking deep breaths but ends up sneezing again. He shivers once, twice.

This is definitely life mocking him, Kris thinks. There’s no way he can have a good time while locked up in the equipment room with his crush if he’s going to sneeze every bloody minute.

Then he hears Luhan sneeze too, and he turns around. The shorter looks away bashfully. “I’m fine, don’t worry.”

Kris shakes his head in light disbelief and he grabs at Luhan’s hand before his brain can even register what he is doing. The fingers are slightly calloused, and they’re cold and a bit shaky. Luhan retracts it brusquely before Kris can do anything more.

“I’m fine,” the elder reasserts in a sort of cajoling denial. 

This is kind of really cute, Kris thinks. 

He must have done something right in his past lives as a Brachiosaurus to get to see this side of him. He wants to pull Luhan into his arms and tell him they should keep warm together except that’s cheesy as fuck and he probably shouldn’t do that, on second thought—

“Hey, maybe I could fit through that window,” Luhan proposes, and Kris gapes because the window in question is half a meter wide and barely the size of half of Kris’s chest.

“I… highly doubt it,” Kris replies, but Luhan is already under the window, trying to lift himself to it.

“We could give it a try,” the shorter says, “Come give me a hand up, would you?”

Kris complies as Luhan almost falls backwards and he catches him and quickly puts him down.

“Okay, just give me a step,” Luhan says, eyes still focused on the window. Kris complies: he kneels down and holds his palms up.

Luhan steps up on them and is opening the window latch, pushing it open only to have rainwater mercilessly coming in. He tries to get a hold of the sill and pushes himself upwards even more.

Kris pushes up the step as Luhan fits a bit more through the opening, but at one point the shorter slips and before Kris can really understand what to do anymore, between legs and lanky arms, he’s holding Luhan up with his hands on the other’s butt.

Luhan stops struggling through and Kris can imagine the deadpan face without even needing to see it.

“Kris, are you feeling my butt up or—”

“N-n-n-n-n-n-NO oh my god, NO Luhan, what are _you_ thinking, AHAHAAH,” Kris shrieks because it’s really a sincere _accident_ , it’s not like he has the kind of courage to just feel his crush’s bottom up, you know, “I’m not. It’s just. My hands are big and they kind of cover up your hips, ass and thighs in one go, uh.”

Luhan kicks back, forcing Kris to let go and realize what he has just said aloud. 

_Shit I did not just say that._ Kris has never wanted to fade into the background, get eaten by the floor, or just disappear in some magician’s box this badly in his life.

Luhan wriggles himself back inside, an eyebrow raised sceptically, but not entirely deterred by what Kris has just spluttered. “Your sense of humour is pitiable.”

Kris lets go of a breath he did not know he was holding back. 

“My pleasure,” he responds stiffly. Luhan just turns back to the window, but this time a bit in despair. 

“I can’t fit my shoulders through so I guess that’s a no-go,” the shorter concludes. “We have to find some other opening or idea. Or um, do you have your phone with you?”

Kris pats his pocket-less pants nervously. “It’s at the lockers.”

Luhan groans and then he sneezes again.

“I can’t believe after five years, this is the kind of reunion we’re having,” he grumbles as he looks around the room. There are basketballs, nets, rackets, baseball bats, vaults, blue mattresses, some fitness machines… nothing useful, basically. “This is so ridiculous.”

“I’m sorry,” Kris mutters.

“Well I can’t blame you exactly,” Luhan responds idly. He then looks up, eyes lighting up promptly. “Oh! There’s a trap door in the ceiling!”

Kris looks up too and indeed there is, but he’s just not entirely sure how either of them can get there though it seems Luhan’s already started planning it as the shorter starts pulling the jumping vault under the trapdoor.

“Okay, you’re going to lift me up there,” he explains, and Kris gawks because this is all escalating way too fast, and his brain can’t keep up with whatever Luhan is thinking of doing, like, what’s he going to do once he gets out of the trap door and unto the roof while it’s pouring cats and dogs outside? 

“Wait, no, wait, … aren’t you scared of … heights? Or something?” Kris asks, “What are you going to do up there? It’s going to be slippery as fuck and you might just slip off the roof and break your neck.”

Luhan freezes. 

“Oh shit, true.” Luhan goes rather quiet and contemplative.

Then he sneezes and looks away. “Okay, then maybe I should lift _you_ up—”

Kris’s eyes practically pop out of their sockets.

“—I’ll crush you to death!” Kris screams. 

Then he flushes up because actually, _yeah, my crush on you will be the death of me and fuck you, puns, fuck you_.

“Better than rotting in here!” Luhan retorts before sneezing again. This time it’s loud and clear, and it echoes in the closed room rather gloomily.

“I have no idea why you want to get crushed by my weight over just waiting it out till someone notices we’re missing,” Kris frowns, “Let’s just… chill and find a way to keep warm first?”

Kris looks around. The cold is definitely getting to their bones _and_ nerves. He’s never seen Luhan this flustered. He starts going through the boxes: weight balls, tennis balls, badminton birdies—

Then he finds a box with wrapped-up sport uniforms. Must be the new designs for the other sport teams from their school. He shuffles through them, and though they’re all large-sized, he throws one at the other boy, who catches it clumsily.

“We got ourselves a change of clothes!” Kris singsongs as he starts taking off his drenched shirt and rips open the package without further comment. 

It only occurs to him later that he’s technically topless in front of his crush. And that makes him blush to the tips of his ears while he pulls the new shirt over his head inelegantly. He gets stuck a bit in between from rushing through it, but eventually manages. He turns to Luhan with a shy grin.

Except maybe he shouldn’t have turned around.

Luhan is changing too, his slender body leaning backwards while he’s pulling off his wet shirt, head coming out from under, movements smooth and graceful and beautiful and—

“Kris, you’re staring,” the shorter says before tugging the neon pink shirt on. It reads in Comic Sans MS: “Chihuahuahuaahahaha” and has a horrible laughing Chihuahua caricature printed under. Kris has the vague sense that he may have been the one who drew it. 

“It’s a cute shirt, sorry,” Kris chuckles, glad that he can change the focus of the topic, and Luhan stares down at his top in horror. 

To this, the catcher looks down to read his own, and he’s glad he’s got a cooler looking one that has a wolf head below a neat typefont that says “Wolves”. He was about to mock the other’s luck when—

“The back of your shirt says, ‘Awoo do anything for your Love’ by the by,” Luhan tries muffling a laugh, except it’s obviously not his forte when he’s snorting really, _really_ hard.

Kris hides his face behind his hands because wow, he should have never ever thought his bad luck would run out. “This school’s teams are embarrassing.”

Luhan snickers before stopping abruptly. “Wait, what’s… the baseball team called?”

“Oh, we’re … um, _The Dragons_.”

Luhan grimaces mildly. “Okay, um. If our uniform is green, I’m opting out.”

Kris makes a mental note of asking the manager to change the colours on Monday before he smoothly lies, “No, they’re red and white.”

To his relief, Luhan seems to buy it, but mostly because the shorter boy is again trying to look for a way to get out. He is trying the door again but to no avail.

“I wonder what’s got it stuck,” Luhan ponders aloud as he gives several kicks in a row. Kris just sighs and was about to sit down when he realizes that the kicks had shaken the walls and shelves a tad, making a box of footballs hang over Luhan’s head. It balances back and forth, swaying twice before it tips over. 

In a rush, Kris dives forward but his foot gets caught up with some cables halfway through and he actually falls all over Luhan, instead of heroically pushing him away the way his simple brain had originally planned.

The footballs avalanche on Kris’s back unkindly. He tries to stay as still as possible, shielding them over the other boy.

“Shit,” Luhan gasps. 

The last football hits the back of Kris’s head. _Shit, indeed_.

“Shit, shit, shit, sorry,” Luhan curses successively, “Are you okay? Shit.”

Luhan supports himself up onto his elbows, and that closes at least a twenty-inch distance between the two and Kris just freezes up. There’s just about half an arm-length left. He tries not to look straight into Luhan’s eyes, he tries to get up so he can escape the situation but his body won’t move. 

Kris starts assessing his situation but can’t get beyond the fact that his breathing is rather difficult and his heart is about to shut down any time soon. 

“Kris?”

Suddenly, everything around the room starts whispering ‘Kiss him!’, and it’s a horrifying experience, to say the least. Kris squeezes his eyes shut, but of course that doesn’t help.

“Kris, what’s up?”

 _Kiss him, kiss him, kiss him, kiss him, kiss him_ the footballs around them screech.

“Earth to Kris????”

 _Kiss him senseless_ , the thunder outside rumbles. _Ravish him!_

“Okay, Kris, did that last football knock your last brain cells out, I’m really worried now.”

 _Kiss him tenderly_ , the rain drizzles.

“Kri—”

 

“—Luhan I really really like you.”

 

He opens his eyes and they meet Luhan’s, and he actually braves up and keeps their gazes locked together as sincerely as he can. The voices around the room start dying down, and it makes his shoulders relax. He finally pulls back, sits on his butt and passes a hand through his hair, relieving some of the nerves that are jittering across his body.

“I— yeah, that was random,” he starts nervously. “Just never mind m—”

“You like me? Like, _like_ , like? Like?” Luhan sits up, a bit dazed.

Kris brings both of his hands up to his face. “Y-yeah. But just… just never mi—”

Luhan bursts out laughing. “Never mind your confession? Are you kidding?”

“I’m not kidding I just—”

“It’s been a hell of long time coming, I can’t believe you’ve finally said it and you want me to not mind about your confession?”

“I— wait, what?”

“I waited five bloody years, you fool, I can’t believe it took a football to your head for it to come out!” Luhan crawls a bit forward and the alarms are roaring DANGER! DANGER! DANGER! in Kris’s head but he can’t bring himself to move.

Now the elder just stops at half an arm-length. They’re back at that precarious position. Kris goes blank.

 

And that’s when Luhan leans in to kiss him.

It’s a slow, closed-mouth, languid kiss. The shorter presses in softly for more. Once, twice, thrice. A hand comes up to cup Kris’s cheek. Their foreheads press together gently. Kris suddenly gets a vision of them sitting in a flower field and kissing while a sun sets

Luhan pulls back, a grin on his face, and that gives Kris some sort of rush of confidence. He pushes the other down and dives for another round.

They kiss a bit more roughly now. A something, that neither can define, that had built up over years, finally releases itself in their caresses. Luhan’s arms are wound around Kris’s neck. The taller’s hands are holding the small of the other’s back. 

They kiss and kiss and kiss and it’s like nothing else really matters.

Except Kris breaks it because he still isn’t sure what is going on and he seriously needs to make things clear as daylight or else. 

“Wait, so you like me too?” he asks, breathily because he’s run out of oxygen or whatever that chemical thing he’s breathing is called. Requited Love, was it?

Luhan sits back up, looking away. “S-something to that effect.”

Kris’s face stays blank but he’s screaming and cheering inside. “Wow. S-since when?”

Luhan gulps. “I have no clue. It’s been a while.”

Kris mouths another “wow”. Luhan looks away again, blinking nervously.

“I think this is where you ask me out on a coffee date or something,” he then suggests. “I seriously need something warm.”

Kris sort of titters.

“Yeah, I’d…like to take you out of this room first, not going to lie,” he says.

Luhan groans. “Right. I’ve _almost_ forgotten.”

They sit quietly for a while, and then Luhan stands up and sits next to Kris and rests his head on the other’s shoulder.

“We can only wait it out,” he mutters. Kris hesitantly wraps an arm around the other, and they sort of cuddle together closely and it’s awkward but comfortable at the same time. 

 

 

But that’s all they really need, that’s all they really _are_ : just a bit of awkwardness to keep them laughing at each other. Just a bit of comfortableness to keep them together till the end of time. 

 

 

 

Though, by the end of the _day_ , albeit the fact that it’s nice to have one another’s “awkward and comfortable” company, they’re really just pissed off no one else seems to be thinking of them because they’re still there.

 

WHY. ARE. THEY. STILL. THERE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**(A six-line epilogue)**

 

“Maybe we should try that window again.”

“So you can grope my defenceless butt? No thank you.”

“I hadn’t… even thought about that?”

“You want me to believe that you and your yaoi hands didn’t think about that?”

“Yaoi … ?”

“Ugh— Never mind.”


End file.
